Grace Evangelical-Lutheran: Exodus 34,4-10. 19th Sunday after Trinity

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ

Exodus 34,4-10 5314

19. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 064

Amandus, Bishop at Strasbourg, France. ✠ 354.

Amandus, Bishop of Bordeaux, France. ✠ 431.

Philipp Nicolai ✠ 1608, Johann Heerman ✠ 1647, and Paul Gerhardt ✠ 1676. Hymnwriters

26. Oktober 2014

1. O God, You are in our midst and Your Divine Providence covers us: teach us to call upon You with petitions and thanksgiving so that we learn to put all our trust in You, our Merciful Lord (VELKD, Prayer for 19. Sunday after Trinity § 1). Amen.

2. »Yahweh said to Moses: „Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to Me on the top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.“ So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as Yahweh had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the Name of Yahweh. Yahweh passed before him and proclaimed: „Yahweh, Yahweh, a Merciful and Gracious God, who is slow to anger, is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness and keeps steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.“ And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said: „If now I have found favor in Your sight, O Adonai, please let Adonai go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for Your inheritance.“

3. The Lord is faithful to His covenant. Israel had broken that covenant while Moses was on Mt. Sinai for forty days and nights receiving it inscribed on two tablets. Israel’s gross idolatry had broken the covenant. Yahweh is a Jealous God who brokers no rivals. He could have invoked the punishment clause in the covenant: to hold the guilty accountable and visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children to the 3. and the 4. generation. To be sure, Yahweh did punish that rebellious generation. He ordered the priestly Levites to kill the idolaters (Exodus 32,27). The Levites struck down 3000 men that day with their swords (Exodus 32,28). Then Yahweh sent a plague on the people because they had made the golden calf (Exodus 32,35). And yet, Yahweh refrained from holding the next three generation accountable for the sins of their great-grandparents at Sinai. Only that rebellious generation He had lead from Egypt died in the wilderness. Their children were given the Promised Land by the mercy and loving-kindness of Yahweh.

4. Moses chastised the people: You have sinned a great sin (Exodus 32,30). They received temporal punishment for their sin, but Moses also told them: Now I will go up to Yahweh and make atonement for your sin (Exodus 32,30). Yahweh invoked the grace clause in His covenant: Yahweh is a Merciful and Gracious God, who is slow to anger, is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness and keeps steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. We see this mercy in the words and actions of Jesus. Once He saw a man blind from birth, and His disciples inquired: Is this man bearing the punishment for the sin of his parents (John 9,1-2)? His disciples were focusing on the punishment clause of the covenant, but Jesus focused on the gospel clause of the covenant. He told them: Neither this man, nor his parents, sinned. He was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him (John 9,3). God the Father is merciful and gracious. Jesus bears witness to His Father’s mercy and grace, and He healed this blind man. We see this also in today’s Gospel pericope: Jesus forgave a paralytic of his sins and then He healed him. Jesus shows us time and again that God is merciful, gracious and forgiving. He is slow to anger and abounds in steadfast love and faithfulness.

5. All this runs contrary to our way of doing things. We are tempted to be merciful and gracious to those who deserve it, to those who have earned it from us by not being wicked and despicable people. We love and are faithful to those who love and are faithful to us. Those who are dubious of their honor are less likely to get our fidelity. The pharisaic strain runs deep within us, too. We think we must strive to earn God’s good favor and righteousness. We think we can merit this righteousness by obeying the Ten Commandments. Such thinking ends with either pompous pride in our accomplishments or deep despair at our utter failure to measure up to God’s demands.

6. Yahweh has a long history of dealing with stubborn folks and works-righteous people. The Israelites, the Pharisees and a host of others in Judaism and Christianity have tested God’s patience and love. Time and again, God could have forsaken His people and started over with someone else. God, however, does not do this. He responds to unfaithfulness and unrighteousness with faithfulness and righteousness. Throughout the Holy Scriptures God upholds His covenant with His people. God sends prophets and pastors to call His people to repentance and to remember that God is gracious and forgiving. He even sent His own Son to show us the depth of His mercy and love. Jesus spoke of God’s mercy and showed His love through His actions. Jesus taught His disciples that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again (Mark 8,31). At Jesus’ crucifixion, when the centurion saw that Jesus had breathed His last, he said: „Truly this man was the Son of God!“ (Mark 15,39).

7. The beauty of God’s covenant is that He, and He alone, fulfills it. His covenant contains provisions for judgment and mercy. The Son of God Himself bears upon His body the very unfaithfulness and every sin of men and women. He Himself suffers the wrath and punishment that those sins demand. Jesus did this on the cross, and in bearing all our sin Jesus freely enacts the gospel clause of the covenant. Sin has been atoned for, death and the grave have been overcome and the risen Jesus is verifiable proof of God’s love, mercy and forgiveness upon all men and women.

8. This crucified and risen Savior is preached so that we hear and believe that Christ has made atonement for us. We can easily miss God’s merciful and fatherly heart for it is hidden from us in this world that is filled with chaos, suffering and death. We might wonder where God is when evil seems to rule the day. We might doubt whether God loves and forgives us. When God is hidden, our sinful nature is quick to contemplate that God must be judging and condemning us for some wicked sin.

9. Jesus entered this world as God revealed. The Apostle John tells us in his Gospel: »In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth arrived through Jesus Christ« (John 1,1.14.16-17). Jesus showed us that He loves and forgives us. Jesus triumphs over evil, heals sickness and removes suffering. God the Father is revealed in Jesus and we now see the loving-kindness of God that He has for us men and women. »Philip said to Jesus: „Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.“ Jesus said to him: „Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me. I and the Father are one« (John 14,8-9.11; 10,30).

10. Jesus reveals to us that it is God’s will for us to be certain of His loving-kindness toward us. God promises to us His mercy and love; He grounds this promise upon His very own Son. Thus, this promise does not have any condition of our merits, but freely offers the forgiveness of sins and justification by grace (Apology 4,41). This promise is preached so that this gospel may be heard, believed and trusted. Amen.

11. Let us pray. O Yahweh, Your steadfast love endures forever: we thank You for all the preachers and teachers who have patiently explained to us Your sacrificial love so that we can live each day in the certainty that we are saved. Amen.

To God alone be the Glory

Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm

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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

Grace Evangelical-Lutheran

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church

Monday, October 27, 2014

Exodus 34,4-10. 19th Sunday after Trinity

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